The present invention relates generally to refrigerators, and more specifically, to locations of elements and apparatus involved with making ice and delivering water throughout a refrigerator.
Generally, a refrigerator includes a freezer compartment and a fresh food compartment which are partitioned from each other to store various foods at low temperatures in appropriate states for a relatively long time.
It is now common practice in the art of refrigerators to provide an automatic icemaker to increase the speed of the ice-making operation. In a “side-by-side” type refrigerator where the freezer compartment is arranged to the side of the fresh food compartment, the icemaker is usually disposed in the freezer compartment and delivers ice through an opening in the access door of the freezer compartment. In this arrangement, ice is formed by freezing water with cold air in the freezer compartment, the air being made cold by the cooling system or circuit of the refrigerator including an evaporator. In a “bottom freezer” type refrigerator where the freezer compartment is arranged below a top fresh food compartment, convenience necessitates that the icemaker be disposed in the access door of the top mounted fresh food compartment and deliver ice through an opening in the access door of the fresh food compartment, rather than through the access door of the freezer compartment. In this case, for example, cold air, which is cooled by the evaporator of a cooling system, is delivered through an interior channel of the access door of the fresh food compartment to the icemaker to maintain the icemaker at a temperature below the freezing point of water.
Location of the icemaker within the fresh food compartment presents many new challenges not previously encountered. The ice making compartment needs to be kept at a lower temperature than the fresh food compartment for making and storing of ice. Water must be delivered to the icemaker, which has fewer options of conveyance for tubing than a stationary icemaker within a conventional freezer. This configuration, of the icemaker being in the fresh food compartment, incurs others disadvantages, which include, structural complexity of the access door of the fresh food compartment because of the formation of cold air channels in the door, and difficulty to keep the evaporator air cold when it is delivered to the icemaker because of the distance it must travel. As a result, the manufacturing cost of the refrigerator may be increased, and the rate at which ice can be made may be reduced.
Temperature control within the ice making compartment during ice storage and production is an important control limitation. Heat sources within the ice making compartment should be reduced to a minimum, making maintenance and monitoring of temperatures within the compartment a priority.
With many new refrigerators the access door not only contains the ice making compartment, it also may have a drinking water delivery system for a user to access from the outside of the refrigerator. Typically to supply both the ice making compartment and the drinking water delivery system, two separate delivery lines would have to extend between the refrigerator body/chassis and the access door. This requirement for two separate delivery lines poses a problem because of the limited space available in the supporting hinges which secure the access door, through which delivery lines typically pass.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an accurate temperature reading for efficient ice production and storage, reduce heat sources within an ice making compartment, and reduce the number of water delivery lines passing through the supporting hinge of the access door, so that refrigerators can be produced and operated more efficiently.